Dust Makes Cosmic Inflation Signal Iffy

September 24, 2014 2:05 PM

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A new analysis of Planck data provides the best measurements ever made of polarized dust emission across the sky — and bolsters the claim that the signal heralded as evidence for cosmic inflation is from dust instead.

Things are looking grim for the purported discovery of cosmic inflation’s fingerprints. Earlier this year, the BICEP2 team announced the detection of primordial B-modes, swirly polarization patterns imprinted on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) thanks to the hypothesized, split-second inflation...